Friday, May 15, 2009

The Art of Color, Demystified

Like most of you, my computer is chock-a-block with files of favorite images that I've culled from various websites. I turn to them whenever I need to be creatively galvanized, when I want to be reminded of the design elements I love or when I'm just craving a jolt of style. When it comes to colors, though, it can be a bit tricky to pull a specific shade or hue off the screen and onto a curtain, couch, wall or pillow.

Until now.

That's because yesterday I stumbled upon www.colorhunter.com. Just upload an image onto their website and they instantly analyze it and break it down into its five most recognizable color components.

Warning: Extreme caution must be used with this application if you are a design junkie. Addiction may rapidly occur and result in severe sleep loss, hunger, dehydration and cranky spouses.

Here are some color palettes I created when I should have been eating/sleeping/lavishing attention on my family.

22 comments:

Anonymous
said...

You have saved my day!!! THANK YOU...coming monday we need to give the painters the exact colour. I'll send an E-mail right NOW to my hubby, so he knows he needs to take care of the kids till monday...I'm off to colorhunter.com...X, C.

Funny, I already do this on my own. I am always and have always had the ability to hunt down and scout out the colors. I see in full living color.So many years of studying color theory~ I'd be lost without my sense to separate and mix color. People tell me "You are good!" I just can look right away and analyze people by color. "You are shades of gold, amber and a rich ruddy red, with green undertones..."pve

hmstrjm: I know, it's ALL about the red. But I think it's like squinting at a painting (see PVE's post): Colorhunter provides you with the broad swaths of color and then you have to fill in the details yourself...

Really fascinating! It's incredible that you use Carrington's painting as an example. I once visited the village of Ham where Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington had their house, called Ham Spray. It's just like the painting. It's so charming and idyllic. You can see surrounding downs and you can imagine the countryside where Carrington would go for her ride.

If you're interested in converting RGB hex codes to paint swatches, you may want to check out this site I stumbled upon:

http://www.easyrgb.com/index.php?X=SEEK#Result

It makes the conversion for lots of different paint brands. It will also let you calibrate the site to suit your monitor, so that's worth doing if you want to make sure you're not surprised when you go to the store for swatches.